One Killer To Another
by niennah
Summary: Willow brings Warren back. 1/1


Title: One Killer To Another  
Author: Anna  
Rating: PG-13  
Disclaimer: Not mine.  
Feedback: Yes please. niannah@hotmail.com  
Pairing: Warren/Willow  
Summary: Willow brings Warren back.  
Distribution: SU, Soulmates. Anyone who has archived my stuff before, please go ahead. Others, just let me know. Thanks.  
Site:   
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Warren stared bleary-eyed at the trees above and felt ill. His skin felt uncomfortable and wrong. Sticky.   
  
She had told him about it, leaning over him in the grass. She reminded him, in a cold, hard voice, how she had killed him. It had all come back. Being strung up between the trees and the neat little trick with the bullet. Then the flaying. That had hurt. He told her so.   
  
"It was supposed to," she said evenly.   
  
He shrugged at that and his eyes focused back on the treetops. They waved like seasickness far above. It was the wind. He spread his arms out on either side and waited for sky to stop racing by quite so quickly. Perhaps he would stand when the sky stopped. Sit, at least.   
  
"You deserved it," she said. Her hair was red again. It was nice. When he had woken up her eyes had been black, but now they were back to their pretty green.   
  
"I know," he said. His voice was cracked with disuse. He still felt dizzy.   
  
"You know?" she said, puzzled. She sat beside him, her legs crossed. If he curled his arm he would be holding her, he thought. He didn't care.   
  
"Sure I know," he said quietly. "What did you think I was, some psychopath?"   
  
Willow tore strips from the stem of grass in her hand.   
  
"Well, yeah," she said.   
  
He looked at her sidelong. Her hair shaded her face in the already grey light. It was cold.   
  
"I wasn't a psychopath." He looked back to the quickening sky. Grey surges moved like lava in the clouds. "I never didn't care."   
  
Willow stayed silent for a moment. The blade of grass was torn to shreds. She picked another.   
  
"I know, I guess." She spoke quietly. "I saw your face when you saw Katrina."   
  
He winced. She noticed.   
  
It was getting darker and uncommonly cold.   
  
"You brought me back," he said. He looked at her again without moving his head. Moving hurt.   
  
She nodded.   
  
"I did," she said. She looked at him too, her eyes narrow and guarded. "The guilt, it got too much."   
  
"I'd nod understandingly, but it hurts," he said. She smiled, just a little. He lay silent for a while, stretching his body back into his skin. The ground was damp against his back.   
  
"I have a new girlfriend now," she said at last. Warren looked back at her now, the feeling in her voice unexpected. "Well, we're dating," she said. "She's really nice. Not Tara, but nice." He heard the weight of suppressed tears in her voice. Still there, after all this time.   
  
He did not know what to say, so he let her talk.   
  
"So it's not okay," she continued. "But it's over."   
  
He did nod this time. Pain racked his skull, but a little less now than when he first woke up. The cold helped.   
  
"So you brought me back," he said.   
  
"Yeah," she replied, still picking at the grass. The sound of the wind above was loud, but down here he could hear her gentlest words.   
  
"With my skin?" he asked. His fingers were almost fitting properly now. He moved them a little. They prickled like needles.   
  
"Yeah," she said again. "I sorta… filled it."   
  
He felt so heavy, stuck to a spinning ball. His felt like he was falling.   
  
"Thanks," he said. "I feel sick."   
  
"You will, for a while." She looked over him. She looked satisfied, as if he were a job well done. "Where were you?" she asked suddenly.   
  
"Dead," he replied.   
  
"Do you remember anything, I mean?" she clarified. Her voice was softer than it had been.   
  
He looked back to the leaves.   
  
"No," he said, after a while. "Nothing." His eyes felt leaden. His eyelids scraped unpleasantly over his eyeballs when he blinked.   
  
"You'll feel better soon," she said.   
  
"I hope so," he replied. "There's a storm."   
  
"I know," she said. "The magics I used to bring you back, they mess with the energies in the air and – storm." She looked up into the ever heavier sky.   
  
"I'm cold," he said. "Are you cold? Or is it just that I'm… new?"   
  
She looked back down at him.   
  
"It's cold," she said. "It'll get colder. Big magic." Her eyes flashed black.   
  
"I guess." His gaze played over the turbulence above. Shapes formed and disappeared with such a pace that his synapses hurt to keep up.   
  
"We'll wait here, though, till you're ready to move." She touched him to reassure him. A spark jumped from her fingers to his belly, where she had laid her hand.   
  
He felt the spark long after she had taken her hand away and forgotten it. He lay and felt it tingle in him, stretching him and shaping him and he fit perfectly, soon, inside his skin. He moved his fingers again. It was easy. He wriggled his toes inside his trainers. They felt right and comfortable.   
  
By the time the first snowflakes began to fall he could sit up with barely an ache. The snow had become a grey swarm against the sky. She wrapped his arm around her shoulders and helped him to walk.   
  
He felt her watch him as she struggled to help him over the uneven ground back to Sunnydale, wondering, he guessed, how death and resurrection had changed him. He felt her fledgling faith in him. How would he use this second chance, he felt her ask.   
  
He wrapped his arm more tightly around her.   
  
Any way he wanted, he thought. Soon the pain would go away completely and he would no longer need her. He would be better this time, and alone. Alone was best.   
  
Though he would see she stayed around. He could think of some uses for her.   
  
"Thank you, Willow," he said quietly, leaning gently towards her in the darkness of the trees.   
  
She smiled a cliché of sunshine.   
  
"You're welcome, Warren," she replied.   
  
One killer to another, he thought. We're just getting started.   
  



End file.
